these things is an essentially grotesque figure. To listen to young
men discussing one of these my belated contemporaries, and to hear
one enforcing on another the amusement to be gained from watching
the old buffer's manoeuvres, is a lesson against undue youthfulness.
One can indeed give amusement without loss of dignity, by being
open to being induced to join in such things occasionally in an
elderly way, without any attempt to disguise deficiencies. But that
is the most that ought to be attempted. Perhaps the best way of all
is to subside into the genial and interested looker-on, to be ready
to applaud the game you cannot play, and to admire the dexterity
you cannot rival.

What then, if any, are the gains that make up for the lack of
youthful prowess? They are, I can contentedly say, many and great.
In the first place, there is the loss of a quality which is
productive of an extraordinary amount of pain among the young, the
quality of self-consciousness. How often was one's peace of mind
ruined by gaucherie, by shyness, by the painful consciousness of
having nothing to say, and the still more painful consciousness of
having said the wrong thing in the wrong way! Of course, it was all
immensely exaggerated. If one went into chapel, for instance, with
a straw hat, which one had forgotten to remove, over a surplice,
one had the feeling for several days that it was written in letters
of fire on every wall. I was myself an ardent conversationalist in
early years, and, with the charming omniscience of youth, fancied
that my opinion was far better worth having than the opinions of
Dons encrusted with pedantry and prejudice. But if I found myself
in the society of these petrified persons, by the time that I had
composed a suitable remark, the slender opening had already closed,
and my contribution was either not uttered at all, or hopelessly